Bathroom Stall Tactics

I am still trying to extract nostalgic terms about returning to my high school as a middle aged man. After watching a comedy show with my company last night, I left her grace in the auditorium in search of the closest bathroom. Bladder retention isn’t what it used to be as when I bounced around these halls as a testosterone laced lad circa 1980.

As I passed by a dusty sports trophy case of yesteryear, I reminisced about sports that I can only marginally play for exercise now. The wall-mounted video cameras seemed an intrusive addition to a place of learning but the passage of time took its greatest picture on my memory banks. Perhaps it was nothing more than a man now walking commensurate with his age, but I entered the bathroom in what seemed like slow motion. Although it looked and smelled alarmingly the same, I sensed one changed variable. A person who has aged and changed.

I remembered last using this same bathroom urinal after watching our school’s senior play. I recalled the cockiness of my whole life that once laid before me. Now I do not even take pissing straight for granted. It took me all of thirty-one years to return to my high school. As amber urine trickled down a porcelain throne, I realized that my life was more than halfway over and many of those years came with its own wrecking ball. I mused why we are all here. Returning to my stomping grounds produced such a residual effect on me that I pulled out my high school yearbook today…There I was wearing pictorial optimism alongside the haunting caption…To find the meaning of life…a seemingly lifelong journey as it's starkness continues to imprint on me.